


Where That World Has Gone

by lovelymartin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, In which Sherlock goes on the mission in Eastern Europe, M/M, Pining, Post-His Last Vow, Universe Alteration, but he doesn't die after six months
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2014-11-15
Packaged: 2018-02-25 10:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2618180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelymartin/pseuds/lovelymartin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there is one thing Sherlock has known, and still knows, and will always know, it’s that some things are doomed never to end, and other things are doomed always to end.  Most of the time, the things that are supposed to end are the ones that never do, and the things that are meant to be forever are the ones that will always be never.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where That World Has Gone

**Author's Note:**

> “Suddenly there is a great split between now and then, and I wonder where the world where that day happened has gone, because we are not in it.”   
> —Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones

Five times since he met John Watson, Sherlock thought the world was going to end.

The first, dim. Indoors, in a place he did not know.  His fingers shook as they pressed against the capsule, the white pill like soap in shower-soaked hands.  He squeezed tighter, until he thought the pill would burst and he’d be saved, his heart would burst and he’d be saved.  The other man’s chest burst, and he was saved.

The second, cold. Nighttime, memories stagnant on the surface of the clear blue water.  His fingers shook as they gripped the gun, cold metal against cold night against warm skin against frozen fear against boiling panic.  He brushed the trigger but did not press, skin cells shedding against the metal, electrons grazing against the metal.  Dark eyes were conductors of fear, just like copper wire was conductor of heat, just like John Watson was conductor of light, of dark, of fear and betrayal and confusion and no, John Watson did not betray him.  The pinpricks of red light on his chest betrayed him.  

The third, dizzy.  The fog was a haze that swallowed the night, the leaves on the trees blurred in the wet air laced with chemicals and saturated with fear.  His fingers shook as they struggled to hold the torch, the light weak as dewdrops that bristle the surface of the grass but do not have the power to drench, to drown.  The hound was coming, the footsteps were coming, the fear and the disbelief and the doubt were coming, and he had cast off everything to trust his head, but now he could no longer trust his head.

The fourth, grey.  Cloudy.  Toes in shiny shoes curled over the edge of the building, crimson blood curled over the edge of the fallen man’s jaw and pooled on the concrete.  His fingers shook as they pressed into the phone, oily fingerprints staining the aluminum backing, grease trails slipping through the sky.  He was not worried about the plan, he didn’t care about the plan anymore, the plan wasn’t why his world was burning all around him. It was the shaking voice, tinny and distorted, hardened and cold and wet and raw and desperate, that scraped away the skin on his ears and sent pinpricks of white-hot pain through his chest with every word.  The lump was rising in his throat, his hands were slipping on the phone, his throat was constricting around the weight of his goodbye as if he’d been swallowing boulders.  He was not the broken one, he was the one doing the breaking, he was the martyr who spread his arms wide like a cross and toppled over the edge to meet his fate.

The fifth, blue.  Pale blue, dappled with clouds, contrasted with green and the dark grey concrete and yellow lines and white airplane that he could not ignore no matter how hard he tried.  His fingers shook as they dug into his skin, he shook as he dug into himself, his voice shook as he stared over John Watson’s head instead of meeting those grey eyes.  This was the end, this was the real end, Sherlock and John had come to an end.  The woman in the red jacket marked the end, the glinting glasses of the dead man marked the end, the disappointed furrow of his brother’s brow marked the end, the spotlight and the rippling wind marked his end.  He dragged himself up those steps, and his heavy heart drained out of his body through his tear ducts.  His heavy heart stared at the man he loved, with the woman who loved the man he loved, and the man he loved was in love with the woman who loved him, even though Sherlock didn’t know how he could ever love either of them.  Something was different this time.  This was his real end, this was the fifth time but this was the true time, this was the last time he’d ever see before his vision shut to black, his heart ripped out of his body by the pain that shut down everything else but his mind stuck on repeat.  Death was coming, and Sherlock was ready. The world was over, and he could fade away.  This was finally the end.

Oh, how wrong he was.

Because the way it goes is this: Sherlock doesn't die after six months. He doesn't die after seven months. Or eight. Or even nine. No, he makes it home.  Well, home isn't exactly what he'd call it anymore.

There is no sense of time in hell.  Sherlock had always dismissed hell as something ridiculous, but he knows better now.  He knows now that hell is not some ambiguous feeling, a possibility hovering at the edge of the earth, its flickering fire only present in the form of a shadow cast over the living.  No, hell is among the living, among the people who no longer want to be living, who want the long-since-extinguished flame to be ripped away so they can finally have some respite from the fruitless repetition of trying to reignite it.  Hell is the blood that still pours from brittle and swollen veins, hell is the bruise that beats against the broken skin, hell is the torment of a mind fragmented, the pieces strewn so sporadically that they are impossible to collect.  Hell is the torture from another’s hand, hell is the torture from one’s own hand, from his mind and his lungs and his body and his struggling heart.  There is no sense of time in hell; even though it’s been two years when Sherlock is removed from Eastern Europe, two years are meaningless in a world where pain is eternal.

If there is one thing Sherlock has known, and still knows, and will always know, it’s that some things are doomed never to end, and other things are doomed always to end.  Most of the time, the things that are supposed to end are the ones that never do, and the things that are meant to be forever are the ones that will always be never.  His torture will never end, his pain will never end, his struggling heart will never end, his defeat will never end; his mind will always end, his happiness will always end, his constants—his stasis—will always end.  John Watson, he and John Watson, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: this will always end.  

He knows that when he comes back to Baker Street, nothing will be the way he left it.  This is worse than his previous return, the return after his “fall”—God, it feels so long ago, like a separate age, a separate universe, another world where he still had a chance and Sherlock-and-John still had a chance and he knew that there was something waiting for him on the other side of that door. Even if it had taken some coaxing, wheedling forgiveness through his own red blood and silver sweat beading on his skin as if every pore on his body was sobbing, he had gotten John back, and John had gotten him back, and they had fallen into step as if they had never fallen out of it.  This is different, though. This is a new world, a new civilization built on the last one’s ruins and powered by the energy of relationships lost.  Matter cannot be created or destroyed, energy cannot be created or destroyed; when lives end and relationships end and worlds end the energy remains in the universe. It sizzles in the air until everything hums with static, it fuels the next generation of idiots powered by hope, it dances from surface to surface and catches a spark and sets the rubble, and the world, aflame.  

He knows nothing is going to be the same, but somehow, it still hurts. It hurts that he nearly has to force open the door of his old flat, the hinges grown stiff from neglect, it hurts that the empty flat is just as chaotic and cluttered as he had left it, the only change being the dust that covers everything and spreads an odor of mildew and decay when it mixes with the old experiments and body parts in the fridge.  He wishes someone had thought to come in and clean it up.  He wonders why no one new lives here now; he would’ve thought that Mrs. Hudson would’ve tried to rent it out to someone else, since everyone had thought that Sherlock was never coming back, for real this time. Sherlock had thought he would die on the mission. He wishes he had died on the mission.  The two years of torture and brutality were bad enough, but trying to insert himself back into his old life like nothing had happened, like he can just pick back up where he left off, is another kind of pain entirely.  He can’t ignore the fact that his wounds are still open and fresh, while John’s have scabbed over and are already healing, baby pink skin growing over the gashes while Sherlock’s skin is still torn and soaked with blood.  John has moved on now. John has Mary. Sherlock has nobody.

He lays on the sofa like he used to do, props his bare feet on one end and his head on the other like he used to do, steeples his fingers under his chin like he used to do, and thinks about John like he used to do. He imagines finding his favorite coat and scarf in his closet, and draping the scarf around his neck and the coat around his body just like old times.  He imagines the cab ride out of Baker Street and into the suburban neighborhood where John and Mary live now; he imagines pressing his nose to the glass and staring at the hedges and the houses and the cars as they flash by, the flowers and the families and the fact that John had always hated such a dull, domestic lifestyle.  He imagines the billowing of his coat as he walks up to the front door of the house that is John’s, flipping his collar up to cover his neck as he taps on the front door. He imagines the doorbell echoing through the house, death knell followed by emptiness followed by mourning followed by emptiness, the door creaking open, _John_  pushing the door open, John’s face when he sees the man he thought was dead, the man he had given up for this new world but he had never truly forgotten what a psychosomatic pain feels like.  In Sherlock’s fantasy, John is open and willing, the curve of his spine flexible to Sherlock bending it that way, his lips curling around the feel of Sherlock’s breath, his heat, his sweat that speaks for the feelings he cannot say from his mouth, his fingers wrapping around Sherlock’s hands and Sherlock’s body and Sherlock’s skin and _Sherlock_.  In Sherlock’s fantasy, the new world really isn’t all that different from the old, and the crumbling landscape can be rebuilt and everything can pick up from where it left off. In Sherlock’s fantasy, he loves John and John loves him back and their love is enough to hold them together in a way it had never been able to do before. In Sherlock’s fantasy, John hasn’t moved on.

But this is just fantasy, and the new world is only formed by the destruction of the old, and reconstructing the old would cause the collapse of the new and the people who dare to rebuild their old lives will be broken themselves, discarded just like their old world.  This is just fantasy, and nothing can hold them together, nothing can prevent John from slipping through Sherlock’s shaking fingertips. This is just fantasy, and John isn’t able to go back to what he cast away, and Sherlock isn’t able to go back to what _he_  cast away, and neither of them can make an always out of a never.  This is just fantasy, and John has moved on.

Their old lives have collapsed, and there is no going back. There is no going back to a world before the exile, before the mission that was supposed to put him out of his misery, but instead, increased it.  There is no going back to a world before Mary, and the wedding, and her betrayal, and John’s forgiveness.  There is no going back to a world before Magnussen, and Appledore, and Sherlock’s shot to the man’s head that caused all of this mess in the first place.

Oh, how ironic, to think that he had done it all for John.

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to give this a happy ending, but then I was like nahhhh. I don't really know how coherent this actually is, since it was mostly just an exercise to get myself writing again since I haven't written anything in forever.


End file.
